this question bugs me for some time now... I'm one that have quite large collection of personal videos, recorded movies from tv, etc... I and I had all metadata for those files already in for some other systems (Freevo, Windows HTPC apps)... etc.... As example: now I have to play each video file under UI2 and press Make Thumbnail button and then confirm ... Under Freevo, system made random screenshots from files by himself if they were not already present....

There are also some pretty usable windows applications that help you retrieve metadata in bulk way (for groups of files at once).For instance, there is quite well accepted way of having screenshots for movies in files with same name, just .png extension. And also there are quite common files like folder.png that gives coverart for whole directory, etc...

In this situation I wonder if it's really necessary to use id3 files. It also is a pity that id3 are binary files, so not easily editable with external apps... For instance Freevo saved all those info in text, easy readable files. Also there is an option of having a text file in each directory that allows different options in showing files in that directory. For instance in video surveillance directory, one would want reverse time ordering of recordings (so latest is shown first)... A lot of troubles were solved in this pretty easy and transparent way...

Am I making any sense ? What I'd vote for is to use one of well known and spread ways to storing/handling metadata...